Spreading The Word

Surprise! All hospitals and referral centres have yet to hear of Pathologists' Assistants (and their merits). It seems there are still some places where Pathologists are spending hours (and their employers paying their salaries) performing tasks which can easily be handled by PAs. Interestingly, the Pathologists are complaining about how hard they're working; are threatening job action unless additional resources are provided, and yet they have not considered delegating significant portions of their work to PAs and Technologists.

I have come to the conclusion (much like London HSC) that a fully-trained PA ought to spend most of her/his time handling the more complex surgicals and performing medical autopsies. The less-challenging surgicals (eg. GI biopsies) can easily be handled by Technologists. I also believe (again, London's way ahead on this one) that PAs ought to have a minimum of a BSc (whereas obviously, MLTs are college-trained).

I have a meeting with a representative of a British Columbia hospital pathology department in a week's time. They have never used PAs and are investigating their value. My job, based on The Ottawa Hospital's 30 year experience (and London's), will be to convince them that they should hire PAs with a BSc and to save the small surgicals, etc. for their Junior Prosector (rather than training the Junior Prosector to be a PA). Time is of the essence; the province is pushing for a major revision in the structure of healthcare and managers are mandated to cut costs.

I have to wonder how many other major centres continue to have highly-paid MDs performing the tasks which, at many centres, are delegated to PAs? Please let me know if you are aware of any by submitting a comment to this post.